I recently learned the hard way that Scout doesn’t like swimming retrieves with Canada geese. She took to the water with her usual enthusiasm: a sprint to the edge of the channel followed by a care-free dive. The bird was floating and she powered across to it, all grunts and glide, her tail a rudder. She pulled the enormous body by the wing to the far bank and yanked it on to terra firma, where she practised gripping it. A mouthful of feathers was her reward.
I called encouragement from 50 yards away. We were separated by a distance that Usain Bolt could have covered in 4.5 seconds had it been synthetic rubber on an asphalt base. But it wasn’t. It was a strongly running incoming tide with muddy banks on both sides.
“Surely you know what I want,” I called in exasperation, citing none of the instructions from
